The Promise of Redemption
by Pen Against Sword
Summary: There comes a time in everyone's life when they realize that they must make a Choice, a turning point, of sorts. [A series of shorts regarding the characters and their decisions. Previously called The Temptation of Death.]
1. To Tango

There comes a time in everyone's life that they realize they must make a choice.

Most great philosophers and wise men of our age and those past discover this point during their lives filled with meaning and thought and lament on the light found in the depravity of the world. But rarely do these great minds fully understand what choice it was. True, you make "choices," but in the face of that one great choice, they are but trifles.

You will find that as you stare your choice in the face, with its hackles raised and its decay-laden breath assailing your senses, that your muscles tense, clenching your lean hands into fists at your sides. You can feel the sweat gathering at your temples, running languidly down the contours of your stiff jaw, completely at odds with your alert body, doing nothing to cool the way your blood is boiling, singing through your veins and leaving discord throughout your mind.

And yet, it strikes you that there is something different, crackling in the air, thrumming in your head. Something calls softly to you from the beyond, lilting and enticing. The cool breath of it tickles your ear and you catch a sweet voice as it whispers to you, "destiny…"

And you know. You know what comes next, what your purpose here is.

"Destiny." The word echoes around, joining the beat in your bones, ticking out a rhythm that crescendos, soaring into the unmistakable sound of epiphany…

Every particle that composes your being screams at you to turn, to flee in the face of your impending death. "Death?" you think to yourself. You have lived with the fear of death all your life; running when you feel that cold eye turned on you. Its empty gaze has been your sole companion at the darkest times, and has served as an anchor in the brighter moments. You see it spelled out in the eyes of your enemies, and you have seen it cloud the sight of your allies, few and far between that they are.

You've winked and grinned cheekily at death, flirted with it and cheated with it and scorned it like a worn-out lover. But death is no mistress tossed away and will not be staved off and evaded forever. Death reaches far and takes hold of those whom She chooses. You are lucky to have gotten this far, with the way you live.

You realize that there is no running away now.

You glance at the fading form of the longboat that carries away the few that still hold some sort of loyalty to you. At the word "loyal," your mouth twists wryly, and Elizabeth comes to mind fleetingly.

There is no more running because there is no escape, but there is also no running because of _them_. Even in the darkest part of you, there is nothing that can make you forfeit them for yourself. You tried after all, made a last-ditch effort to be a heartless coward, but even then you returned. Even then, when there was still a chance that you could worm your way out, they pulled you back with their screams and their pain.

That was no choice, to you. There was no other avenue in this situation.

The kiss was good. Sweet, and bitter and full of regret. Something like alarm bells went off in your head at the emotions mixed in like seasonings, but you are slightly ashamed that you lost yourself a bit, let your guard slip. Another choice, you suppose. But the slip in that choice has led you to another choice, and with a start, you realize the cliché of your life flashing before your eyes.

With that realization comes another: everything you have done in your life has been done to lead you to this point, even if you were unaware of it. Running away, becoming a pirate, the deal with Davy Jones, all of it. Every single thing you've done has been for the sole purpose of this. This choice.

_Your_ choice.

Even though it looks as though there is nothing else for it, nothing you can do but sit back and wait calmly for the pain, for death, there is more.

You can only tango closely with Death before you realize the knife in your back is there because you decided to dance with Her. But then you smile through the blood staining your teeth and reveal to Her that the reason Her wine tasted slightly sour was the poison you slipped in before She drank.

So, with the corners of your lips curling in a slightly amused smile, you put on your hat and stare your furious lover in the eye, for who are you to back down from your Choice? The choice to die cringing or to charge in, ready to take your one last shot?

You swallow the fear thickening the back of your throat, you draw your sword, and you open your mouth for one final word. You always _did_ have to have the last word. You _are_ Captain Jack Sparrow, after all.

"'Ello, Beastie."


	2. Flight of a Pawn

There comes a time in everyone's life when they must make a choice.

Most wise men and great philosophers of our age and those past discover this truth during their lives full of thought and meaning and lament on the depravity found in the light of the world. Rarely, however, does even the wisest wise man fully understand what choice they have made that is _the_ Choice.

You knew. You had made your choice.

And now you are regretting that Choice, as is common among those who recognize the gravity of their situation.

Had you done the right thing? Had you made the right decision when you did what you did?

At the time, there was no other way.

You have lived sheltered and refined and beautiful for most of your life. "Most" because there were those times when you would commit tiny acts of defiance, a tiny dent in the bars of your cage. Breaking a vase, climbing a tree…stealing a golden medallion to save an innocent boy. Those infractions only served to feed the fire, consuming your hunger for freedom.

You thought you had dreamed of the day you would escape all the things that restricted you, clutching you in a killing embrace, but what happened next had exceeded all expectations.

You did it. You spread your wings and flew away from there, and the very first gust of wind, boosting you into your new existence, came in the form of a doomed proposal and a too-tight corset. That was when you met Captain Jack Sparrow, the first shaky flap of your feathers.

You had rarely been subject to the cold, hard eyes of Death. You had witnessed Her work in the face of your mother, your friends. You had seen Her in the face of your father, growing like a parasite in the wrinkles at the corners of his eyes, the knobby knuckles of his hands. You had seen her in the bones of the cursed pirates, and you had seen Her once descending on Jack Sparrow in the form of a Hangman's loop.

You, yourself, were not intimately acquainted with sleek, icy Death, but you had seen it enough times to recognize it, and when you met Jack Sparrow, you thought, this is a man who knows Death. You knew that this was a man who danced with Death, dined with Death and slept in Death's bed.

But even this was not enough for you to know Death as you do now. You had seen Her only a few times, and that was what drove you to your Choice. But nothing would have prepared you for the look in their eyes…

There was pain there, immense, stifling pain when you told them. "He elected to stay behind…" You saw the shock, the fear, the devotion there. After all this man had and hadn't done for them, for you, they remained loyal. He schemed and he scammed and he played them like pawns in some grand chess game of his own making, and still, they cared about what happened to him.

_What _could promote such blind faith, such love, you asked yourself then.

But you think of how something inside stung and cried out at the sight of him rowing away from the ship in that longboat. Resigned, that part of you crawled into a corner to lick its wounds. And that same something wagged its tail and whimpered with joy upon his return, and that same something clawed and bit and howled with horror at what you had to do.

When you kissed him, that something pushed its way into the teeth and the tongues and poured itself in with one final attempt at changing your mind, and you had been sure that he would feel it, taste it, would recoil and accuse, but he did not.

_Click_, went the shackle to his wrist, and the bit of something shrieked in animal grief one last time…and died.

Now, the something is gone, and the vast emptiness in its place is suffocating you. You can't breathe under the weight of their sorrow, their denial, and you feel so stupid. Will stares at you in concern, and you choke on your guilt. Your guilt at your deception of him—your guilt that you _wanted_ it—and your guilt at your Choice.

There had been no other way, and you know this, but Dear God, it hurts.

"If there was anything could be done to bring him back…Elizabeth—"

"Would you do it? What would you…Hm? What would any of you be willing to do, hm? Would you sail to the ends of the Earth and beyond to fetch back witty Jack and him precious _Pearl_?"

Tia Dalma stares at everyone with her curious eyes in that curious manner she has.

A chorus of ayes goes up around the room, and something else takes over the empty place in you. The instincts of a pawn in a chess game overtake you, order you to defend your king at all costs, to do everything you can to keep him from checkmate.

This is your one last shot at fixing what you have done. You have made your Choice and now you are doing the only thing you can: you are changing it.

All eyes rest on you.

"Yes."


	3. Cat's Cradle

There comes a time in everyone's life when they realize that they must make a choice.

Most wise men and great philosophers of this age and those past realize this at some point amidst their stacking piles of deep thoughts and clear meaning and lament about how there is no light found in the depravity of the world.

But most wise men and great philosophers don't realize it when they make _that_ Choice. They can assume, and they can puff out their chests and scratch their long white beards and act as if they have the answer with a knowing twinkle in their eyes, but they would no more know the Choice than if it pounced on them and ripped their throats out.

You know, though. You've ripped throats out, and you've dodged your throat _being_ ripped out for many, many years.

There was a time when you sat back and watched the people around you, the ones who lived their comfortable lives of quiet assumptions and empty platitudes with their fake smiles and uncomfortable clothing. There was a time when you tried to be that kind of person, when you tried to smile and wear that uncomfortable clothing and participate in that skin-deep grandeur.

Hah. Delusions of grandeur.

But there were always things—licking at your peripheral vision, flickering out of sight in the corners of your eyes. They beckoned with dark hands and there were promises in their shadowy forms.

And then there was the Sea.

The Sea, she was—_is_ your love. It's so hard to start thinking of yourself in the present tense now. That's one of the most difficult parts. You _are_ alive. You _are_ walking the Earth. You _are_ there to embrace the Sea once more.

You've heard the legend of Davy Jones. You knew—_know_ how the legends intertwined, how it was said that he fell in love with a woman—no, the Sea, no a woman, the Sea, a woman, the SeaawomantheSeawomanSea…

But it makes no difference to you. They are one in the same, for you cannot think of anything that a man could love more than the cool, salty embrace of the Sea. The Sea takes your sweat and your sighs and your blood and gives you a soul in return.

But then there was a time when you felt that the Sea could no longer help you. Your precious gift from the Sea, your precious soul had been discarded, and all for a mutiny and gold.

Oh, you hadn't regretted the mutiny. _Captain_—you even spit the title in your head—Jack Sparrow had asked for it. His cocky attitude had always rubbed you the wrong way. The way he walked, the way he talked, the way he _looked_ at you; it brought forth a part of you that just snarled with bloodlust and when you had rallied the furious cries of the others on the ship, it had been the sweetest moment of your life to leave that man on that island with his pistol and a single bullet.

Sometimes you thought that maybe _that_ was your Choice. But, no, that wasn't it. And neither was the gold.

There had been a lasting sweetness to the gold. A sparkle that had flared and left a glowing spot on your vision. It had blinded you to the darker side, to what that _stupid_ Sparrow had warned you about. And you realized that by condemning him to his fate on the island, you had saved him from your own. That was when the sweetest moment of your life went sour, so you avoid that part of the memories.

But then, you searched. So long you looked for the pieces of your shattered soul, encased in every bit of gold you had tossed to the wind. The Sea, she cried salty tears of pain for your foolishness, for your blindness, for throwing away her gift to you. Every piece you found brought you closer to filling that ragged space somewhere in your chest, where your soul should have been. The Sea had lost you, and you no longer felt her embrace or her love.

Davy Jones had ripped out his heart but you had done something far, _far_ worse. You had sold your soul and your love for a few paltry bits of metal.

So, when that last piece of gold called out to you, and you knew you had found it around the neck of deadly, beautiful, innocent and not innocent Elizabeth Turner. Swann. Turner? No, no, they weren't married. Were they?

Blast, present tense was hard to accustom yourself to after being dead.

Your Choice was letting Elizabeth Swann onto the _Black Pearl_.

Parley. Hah.

And then, guess what you did _then_!

What else? You died.

But it was all there. Every piece of your soul, dumped into a chest and rubbing against itself, crackling with an energy that you hadn't felt for years, and when you realized your mortality, you realized that it had taken a sword through the middle to wake your brain.

Pathetic.

But the Sea was there once more, to enfold you in her chilly arms, to take you into her depths and cradle you there like a newborn child. It had always occurred to you as something odd that your lover was the mother you never had, but you felt that putting it at the back of your mind was best.

And you drifted in that mind-numbing, beautiful abyss for so long, until the Sea herself woke you once more, with warmed hands and dark eyes and a roguish grin. The Sea informed you that you had a job to do, that it was _your_ turn to do something for _her_.

No wonder Davy Jones cut out his heart for a woman. The Sea. Woman. Sea.

You had loved the Sea so and the Sea had loved you—no, still loves. You love the Sea and the Sea loves you, a forever unending figure-eight dance.

It was so difficult to think in the present tense after being _dead_. Your love _is_ the sea. You _are_ alive. You _are_ walking the Earth.

Again.

Still? Were. Are. Was. Is.

You _are_ Captain Barbossa once more. Or you always were…


	4. Rice Paper

There comes a time in everyone's life when they realize that they must make a choice.

Most wise men and great philosophers of our age and the next stumble upon this universal truth at one point or another in their lives filled with meaning and depth and piles upon piles of wasted thoughts about the depravity and the light in the world.

Rarely, however, do these phenomenal minds realize which choice is _the_ Choice.

Your Choice was your downfall.

"I am the sea." And you are. You have been ever since you first set eyes on the Sea. You were young, you were enchanted, you were easily persuaded. Once She had you, there was no going back. You were Hers for the taking, and once you are Hers, you _are_ Her.

The Sea has inky black eyes, and smooth cool skin, and a mischievous smile, but, most of all, the Sea has warm hands. Those hands that caressed you in the dark, smoothed your brow, tickled your skin, are the same hands that waved you away, tossed you to the side, ripped out your heart and tore it to shreds before your very eyes.

You Chose the Sea over yourself.

Now, after everything is said and done, you find that you long for what every man avoids. You long for the sweet release of Death. She lifts Her hem and displays an ankle for you, swirling Her skirts like a dancer and winking, beckoning. She is icy cold, and you would welcome that cold against the raging fever that consumes you.

Your heart is gone, and you have no essence and there is no man where man should be in you. Some tiny part screams for help amidst the pieces of you, but it is quickly quashed beneath your heel. Those pieces aren't meant to plague you any longer. You shredded them to bits with your own hands, warm and sharp like the Sea, so that you could feel something, _anything_, but now you find that it wasn't worth the effort.

So you thought, maybe, you could carve out your heart and not be bothered by the feeling of not feeling. But the emptiness that overtakes you bonds with the hellfire in your blood, and you are always restless, never even able to step foot on land but for every ten years, such is that the Sea rules you so definitely. You are Hers, no matter what you do.

And why not? Besides the constant reminder of your enslavement, you keep the musical trinket. The melody contained in it is, in fact, the only thing that lulls you to sleep anymore. The rocking waves do not have the effect that they used to over you. A long time ago, the motion was soothing—now, they just fuel the fire.

Your Choice was loving Her, the Sea, a woman, your torture, your soul, your heart, _yourself_.

You are Her, She is you, and you both resent it. For what is love to you, but the endless roll of the tide and the battle for dominance over a force that is never completely yours and never completely Hers? It's been so long that you don't know where She ends and you begin, or where you end and She begins. You don't know because there is no starting and stopping place for the two of you.

Even as She lords her power over you, you secret away the bit of leeway you have over Her, and She knows it, and Her eyes flash, but She tells Herself that She will let you for now, even though She couldn't stop you if She wanted. She doesn't want it. There is a sweet sadism in you and She, She and you.

You love yourself, and it is what kills you, every moment of life that you live dead. You love Her, and you love yourself, and you hate everything for it. There is no man where man should be in you, there is no heart where a heart should be.

You are every bit as human as you ever wished you weren't, and you hate it, and it sets the Sea on fire.

There's not much difference between the deepest love and the darkest hate. You don't know where hate begins and love ends or where love begins and hate ends. It's like the noose with which you perpetually hang yourself.

"I am the sea."

You are. You aren't. You're Davy Jones. You are the Sea.


	5. The White Knight

In everyone's life, there comes a time when he or she must make a choice.

All the great wise men and philosophers of our time and those past have lamented and worried and done nothing about the fact that sometimes, there is no light in the depravity of our world. They've griped and they've groaned and they've seen it as futile to fight, but there's always a choice.

Rarely do these wise men and philosophers ever make that Choice, or even see it as the Choice that will change their world.

Sometimes, it's a good thing.

At least, that's what _you_ seem to think, and honestly, you're done worrying about the opinions of others.

You made your Choice, and you really, really wish you hadn't. It set in motion a chain of events that very well could have been prevented had you just minded your own business and forgot about Jack Bloody Sparrow.

There was just something about him that made your blood boil. From the first time he had laid hands on Elizabeth, you saw him and your vision clouded over with red. It was that bad. He was a worthy adversary, a filthy pirate for you to wipe off the face of the planet. He dirtied your mother ocean and he dirtied the ground he walked on.

He wasn't like any ordinary pirate. He was cunning. He stole a ship right out from under your nose. It was because you underestimated him. It didn't take you long to realize that that was his game. When you underestimated Jack Sparrow, you would lose your footing and plunge to your death.

That was the difference between him and you. He was filthy. He had lank, flyaway hair, tattered clothing, and a nauseatingly self-satisfied smirk. You were clean. With your crisp, starched uniform and your shiny brass buttons, you represented law and order and the word "clean."

What was white, was white, and what was black, was black.

Or so you thought.

But then you made your Choice, and all of your clean-cut morals and your assumptions about the way things worked in the world were dashed to the rocks as quickly as your ship in that hurricane.

You decided that you weren't going to go for the greater good anymore. What was there left for you in doing that sort of thing in your life anyway? Your title and rank were renounced, and your ship and crew were all gone. So you chose the only thing you thought was left for yourself—you stole the heart of Davy Jones and turned it over to the East India Trading Company.

There was a time when you thought you weren't self-serving. There was a time when you thought you were clean, but then they tossed you in the metaphorical pigpen, and what did you do? You lived with the pigs.

Now, you aren't quite so different from Jack Sparrow. Now, you know that there's more to everything than black and white, but you don't want to know that. You don't want to have to think about being anything like him. There's no possible way you can be like that filthy pirate.

You dust off your wig, and you clean off the dirt on your uniform, and you shine your brass buttons.

You feel like yourself again.

But looking clean doesn't make you clean, you realize, and as you look in the mirror, you don't see yourself. You see Jack Sparrow, standing with his head cocked and that filthy smirk plastered on his face. It's sickening, and suddenly you don't feel so clean anymore.

Clean-cut is starting to look a little blurry, and white and black are starting to look a little more gray, you think.

Some would call it the dark side of ambition, but you like to see it as the promise of redemption.

Besides, you like the sound of it when people call you "Commodore Norrington." James Norrington doesn't have _quite_ the same ring to it.


End file.
